superannuation
- 1A retirement fund built from regular deductions from an employee's wages and similar regular contributions from the employer, usually managed by an independent body.
Like a savings account that you and your employer both feed throughout your working life, locked away until retirement.
Most Australian workers pay a portion of their income into superannuation each month.
The company increased its superannuation contributions for long-serving staff.
Similarpension
Note
A word of British, Australian and New Zealand finance, where it names the fund itself. Older usage counted it: the Annual Register of 1823 speaks of the service after which superannuations were granted, meaning individual pensions. Modern usage treats it as a mass noun heading compounds such as superannuation contributions and the superannuation guarantee, so one pays into superannuation, not into a superannuation.
- 2The state of having grown too old or obsolete to remain useful or in active service.
Like a once-essential tool gathering dust after newer technology quietly replaces it.
The library's card catalog slid into superannuation once the records moved online.
He felt his own superannuation creeping in as younger colleagues took over the work.
Similarobsolescence, retirement
Note
The personal meaning, built straight on superannuated: a person past their useful years, and by extension anything outworn. James Hogg's Mary Burnet (1828) has an old woman's words dismissed as "the ravings of superannuation," where it comes close to senility. Said of objects, it simply means obsolescence. The pension fund turns the same idea into money: what is paid to someone retired for age.
Practice
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Origin
This is formed from "superannuate" (from "superannuated") with the suffix "-ion".